Bud the Teacher

Hey Network, Can You Lend a Hand?

   One of the teachers taking our K12Online Conference course writes (in a forum that's private - so no linktribution):

There are so many conference sessions to choose from.  Some conferences have catchy titles, but don't grab me when I click on it.

Will you give me a few recommendations?  I teach high school social studies (including psychology.)  I am interested in Moodles and blogs and any way to combine interesting social studies sites into one place for my students to explore.  My goal for the end of the course is to have created something that will serve this purpose.

What sessions or directions would you suggest for her?  Any projects outside of K12 Online that she should be considering?  I'll share all of your suggestions with her - and also use this post to model the power of the network.  Thanks in advance.

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference.

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA. We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.

Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!")

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools, St. Vrain Valley Public Schools, and Arapahoe High School.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

 

Oh, also feel free to add this image to your blog, or download and print the flyer.

A Blast from Someone Else's Past

    A little while back, Dean mentioned a tweet I made that got him thinking.  I'm still thinking - about what's already out there and what we can learn from it, instead of racing forward to the next new thing in a hurry.  I feel myself skating from content to content and application to application - without enough time to process, to understand.  To learn.  Frustrated with myself, I'm finding myself deep in the archives of bloggers that I trust and respect at the moment, looking for  .  .  .  well, I'm not sure what, but I think it's important.  I've much more to say about that - but in the meantime, here's a blast from someone else's past.  I found this line delicious:

I’ve got weblog fever in a bad way, and I know JUST enough about making them work to make them dangerously intriguing.

The author?  Will Richardson.  August 2002.